lib/crc: simplify the kconfig options for CRC implementations
Make the following simplifications to the kconfig options for choosing
CRC implementations for CRC32 and CRC_T10DIF:
1. Make the option to disable the arch-optimized code be visible only
when CONFIG_EXPERT=y.
2. Make a single option control the inclusion of the arch-optimized code
for all enabled CRC variants.
3. Make CRC32_SARWATE (a.k.a. slice-by-1 or byte-by-byte) be the only
generic CRC32 implementation.
The result is there is now just one option, CRC_OPTIMIZATIONS, which is
default y and can be disabled only when CONFIG_EXPERT=y.
Rationale:
1. Enabling the arch-optimized code is nearly always the right choice.
However, people trying to build the tiniest kernel possible would
find some use in disabling it. Anything we add to CRC32 is de facto
unconditional, given that CRC32 gets selected by something in nearly
all kernels. And unfortunately enabling the arch CRC code does not
eliminate the need to build the generic CRC code into the kernel too,
due to CPU feature dependencies. The size of the arch CRC code will
also increase slightly over time as more CRC variants get added and
more implementations targeting different instruction set extensions
get added. Thus, it seems worthwhile to still provide an option to
disable it, but it should be considered an expert-level tweak.
2. Considering the use case described in (1), there doesn't seem to be
sufficient value in making the arch-optimized CRC code be
independently configurable for different CRC variants. Note also
that multiple variants were already grouped together, e.g.
CONFIG_CRC32 actually enables three different variants of CRC32.
3. The bit-by-bit implementation is uselessly slow, whereas slice-by-n
for n=4 and n=8 use tables that are inconveniently large: 4096 bytes
and 8192 bytes respectively, compared to 1024 bytes for n=1. Higher
n gives higher instruction-level parallelism, so higher n easily wins
on traditional microbenchmarks on most CPUs. However, the larger
tables, which are accessed randomly, can be harmful in real-world
situations where the dcache may be cold or useful data may need be
evicted from the dcache. Meanwhile, today most architectures have
much faster CRC32 implementations using dedicated CRC32 instructions
or carryless multiplication instructions anyway, which make the
generic code obsolete in most cases especially on long messages.
Another reason for going with n=1 is that this is already what is
used by all the other CRC variants in the kernel. CRC32 was unique
in having support for larger tables. But as per the above this can
be considered an outdated optimization.
The standardization on slice-by-1 a.k.a. CRC32_SARWATE makes much of
the code in lib/crc32.c unused. A later patch will clean that up.
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250123212904.118683-2-ebiggers@kernel.org
Reviewed-by: Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Martin K. Petersen <martin.petersen@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@google.com>